40 to 45% of the Total Marks in CAT Will Get You 99 Percentile – CAT Score vs Percentile Trend – How Many Marks You Need for 99+ Percentile in CAT 2025?

CAT Score vs Percentile Trend: Many aspirants wonder how much marks they need for 99+ percentile in CAT 2025? Those who are aiming for MBA/PGDM admissions to top-tier institutes like IIM or other reputed institutes must achieve at least 95 to 99+ percentile. However, this also depends on the difficulty level of the CAT question paper 2025. Before understanding the CAT score vs percentile, aspirants must first understand the overall marking scheme, including the number of questions, maximum marks, marks per question, and negative marking etc. Talking about the previous year, the total marks in CAT 2024 were 204, with 68 questions asked across three sections. Familiarity with the CAT score vs Percentile trend is crucial as it helps you set a target score and predict your chances of securing admission in top MBA colleges in India. This year it is expected that if you get 40 – 45% of the total marks in CAT then you will land up getting a 99
+ percentile in CAT 2025.

Join this free whatsapp group to get the latest information about CAT exam along with the strategies by CAT experts

Why CAT Score vs Percentile Trends Important?

More than 3 lakh students register for the CAT exam, making it a highly competitive process. CAT aspirants aiming for the 99+ percentile must understand all the aspects of the CAT marks vs percentile trend. This trend indicates the difficulty level of the exam, and other candidates’ performance can affect your total CAT score vs percentile. To ensure fairness and consistency in comparing candidates’ performance across different test sessions, the candidate’s score will undergo a process of normalisation. The normalisation process shall adjust for location and scale differences of score distributions across different forms. Once normalised across different forms, the marks are further normalised across different sections. The resulting scaled scores are then converted into CAT percentiles for shortlisting purposes. In this article, we have compiled details about the CAT score vs percentile previous trends and how many marks you need for 99+ percentiles in CAT 2025.

What is the CAT Score vs Percentile?

You must first understand the CAT score and the CAT percentile to gain insights into the CAT score vs percentile trends in a detailed manner. Firstly, the CAT raw scores are normalised across different sections to arrive at the scaled scores, which shall be further converted into percentiles. While the CAT percentile indicates the percentage of test-takers who scored less than you.  For example, if you score 99 percentile in CAT. This implies that you are ahead of 99% of the test takers. We have shared below the previous year’s analysis to help you understand the marks you need to score 99+ percentile in CAT 2025.

CAT Score vs Percentile Trends for Previous Years (Last 5-Years Analysis)

The exam authorities release scaled scores for each section (Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC), Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning (DILR), and Quantitative Ability (QA)) and total along with the CAT Percentiles on its official website. Aspirants must analyse the CAT score vs percentile previous years to get an idea of the competition trends, difficulty level, and set realistic goals accordingly during the preparation. This approach can help them optimise their current study plan and improve their chances of scoring 99+ percentile in CAT 2025. Understanding the expected score vs percentile CAT 2025 after appearing in the exam can also enable them to predict their percentile and chances of clearing the CAT cutoff marks of their target B-school. It has been observed that the CAT marks vs percentile changes every year due to factors like the number of test-takers, difficulty level, etc. Read to find complete details of CAT Score vs Percentile trends and how these insights can help you strategise your preparation effectively.

Number of CAT Exam Takers from 2020 to 2024

Year	Number of Candidates Registered	Number of Candidates Appeared	Percentage increase/decrease in test takers (%)
2020	2,27,835	1,90,144	(-) 9.42
2021	2,29,969	1,91,660	0.79
2022	2,55,501	2,22,184	15.92
2023	3,23,000	2,88,000	29.6
2024	3,29,000	2,93,000	1.73

CAT Score vs Percentile Trend 2024

Percentile	Marks in 2024
99.9	123
99.5	104
99	96
97	79
95	70
90	58
80	44

CAT Score vs Percentile Trend 2023

Percentile	Marks in 2023
99.9	101
99.5	84
99	76
97	61
95	54
90	44
80	35

CAT Score vs Percentile Trend 2022

Percentile	Marks on 2022
99.9	109
99.5	92
99	84
97	72
95	62
90	49
80	36.02

CAT Score vs Percentile Trend 2021

Percentile	Marks in 2021
99.9	124
99.5	110
99	98
97	82
95	73
90	60
80	45

CAT Score vs Percentile Trend 2020

Percentile	Marks in 2020
99.9	130
99.5	115
99	101
97	85
95	76
90	63
80	48

Join the Largest CAT Preparation Community in India

Enroll for iQuanta CAT Course

CAT Score vs Percentile Trend FAQs